I like Nicolas Jaar’s music for it is noisy, languid, psychedelic, and for being experimental in its approach. However, when he has created Darkside with Dave Harrington, who had been a band member in Jaar’s tours, I kind of stood away from listening to their music, for it sounded pretty much like a Pop oriented Electronica for me. Then their remix works of Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” released under the name, Daftside came to an attention; and so made me decide to listen to their album, “Psychic”. The album has been released in 2013, but the duo has announced an end to the collaboration after a year from its release. And now, I would say that it is not bad to remember about the duo, if I would think it as one form of a variation of Jaar’s musical exploration.

The album’s opener, “Golden Arrow” starts with a characteristic Jaar-mood phase which makes me feel like sleepwalking in a forest, also blurring my consciousness, but suddenly a neighing of a guitar breaks in followed by a high-pitched vocal, which turns the atmosphere flip to some other ground. The following track, “Sitra” is a short track veiled with an ethnic fog, but is being followed by “Heart”, a track that flows like a music of a Bluesy guitar. And at this point of shift, the album already starts to sound strange and incoherent. “Paper Trails” coming next, sounds pretty much of a Jaar’s taste, but there still comes a melancholic sound of a guitar, and makes me feel like drinking in an old pub. In “The Only Shrine I’ve Seen”, an eerie singing voice and a psychedelic guitar sound resonate strangely, until James Blake’s poltergeist starts to moan in his spiritual dimension. “Freak, Go Home” is my favorite track in which a band of phantoms in a cyber space plays their Rock music. “Greek Light” and “Metatron” are the tracks that sum up the album with a gloomy atmosphere created by weeping guitar sounds and singing voices sounding like neighing James Blake.

The album as a whole is very much of a Jaar’s taste, but it cannot be denied that guitar parts do not match well with it. However, in some instances when you feel Rock or Blues aspects rise up within the eerie and floating atmosphere created in the album’s psychic world, you will realize that the boundary between an ordinary world and a non-ordinary world gets ambiguous; and that is the part what fancies me much about the album.